Category: Three Count

Three Count | Kamandi, Fungi Feast, Colleen Coover

Here are three things to see, to support and to buy in comics today.

Three Count spotlights, as the title suggests, three things from comics today. It’ll be three things with links, no more, no less. Don’t eat things you find, Scout.

1. To See: Tom Fowler’s Kamandi: Search & Destroy art

If you follow Tom Fowler’s comics work or even just his social media, you know he has a tendency to draw some really wild-looking creatures at times (some of which you can find on T-shirts courtesy of his Threadless store). They are the kind of designs that would be perfect for a world created by Jack Kirby, so it’s no surprise that his concept art for a Kamandi series is simply awesome:

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Three Count | Krakoa in pictures, Jinkies, Mermay

Here are three things to see, to buy and to view in comics this week.

Three Count spotlights, as the title suggests, three things from comics today. It’ll be three things with links, no more, no less. Hope you survive the experience.

  1. To View: Gerry Duggan’s Krakoa-era creator photos

It’s a pretty good time to be an X-Men fan. Not only is there the mega-popular X-Men ’97 animated series on Disney+ and a new Deadpool & Wolverine movie coming this summer, but there’s also a lot going on with Marvel’s merry mutants in the comics. As the Krakoa era ends in spectacular fashion, the From the Ashes era gets set to begin, and I’m not sure you could have the excitement of one without the game-changing nature of the other.

Gerry Duggan has been part of the Krakoa journey since the beginning, writing both Marauders and X-Men, as well as Iron Man, which seemed to find its way into the line at the end. In addition to being a writer, Duggan is also a photographer, and even crowdfunded a book of his photos a couple years back. In his Substack newsletter this week, he shared a collection of photos of his fellow creators he’s taken during the Krakoa journey, at retreats and other meet-ups, spanning several years and a pandemic. Outside of stalking them at bars during conventions, it’s rare that you get to see creators interacting like this … in meeting rooms and, yes, at bars.

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Three Count | Rebel, Modern Carapace, Rob Guillory

Here are three things to download, to buy and to watch this week.

Three Count spotlights, as the title suggests, three things from comics today. It’ll be three things with links, no more, no less. Like a zombie it’ll dig itself back up again.

  1. To Download: Rebel by Ken Lowery and Gavin Guidry

I was today years old when I discovered that Ken Lowery and Gavin Guidry had done a 16-page Star Wars: Rogue One fan comic. It features Jyn Erso doing what Jyn does best — screwing up the plans of the Empire while saving orphans. It’s well done with some really great full page images that showcase Guidry’s ability to draw action shots:

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Three Count | David Petersen, Council of Frogs, Sonic Frontiers

Here are three things to read, to support and to download in comics today.

Three Count spotlights, as the title suggests, three things from comics today. It’ll be three things with links, no more, no less. Don’t call it a comeback.

1. To read: David Petersen’s The Amazing Screw-On Head fan comic from 2004

Mouse Guard creator David Petersen posted a blast from his past to his blog this week — a fan comic he made for Mike Mignola’s The Amazing Screw-On Head with Maija Graham.

“Back in 2004 I was an active member of the Hellboy forums on CBR,” he said in his post. “We had a great community who were fans of Mike Mignola’s work, but also a support community for our various hobbies, crafts, and artwork. A group of us decided it would be fun to put together a web-only fan comic, a few pairs each working on a short story of a Mignola creation.”

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Five Count | Ignatz minicomics

Here are five minicomics you can buy, read and vote for in this year’s Ignatz Awards.

Three Count spotlights, as the title suggests, three comic things. Usually it’s three things with links, no more, no less. Today, however, it is more, because it’s Five Things.

(Art up top by Alexander Laird)

To vote for: Your favorite Ignatz-nominated minicomics

On Sunday I ran down the five comics nominated in the “Outstanding Online Comic” category for the 2022 Ignatz Awards. With voting open to anyone on the internet, my assumption is that folks would like to make informed choices on their ballots, and webcomics are the most easily accessible comics out there, right? Just give me a URL and off I go.

But that got me thinking about some of the other categories, and whether it would be easy to read everything nominated. With the graphic novel category, for example, it would be easy enough for the ambitious sort to hunt down all five nominees, whether that’s via a good local book store or comic shop, or, of course, through online ordering. But the minicomics category might be a little more challenging, so here’s a rundown of where you can find all five of the nominees.

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Three Count | Major Sun, SDCC panels, Sequential Scholars

Here are three things to support, to listen to and to follow in comics today.

1. To vote for: Major Sun on Webtoon

Webtoon is currently running a Call to Action contest, where various creators compete for a spot on the site — as well as for cash and other prizes. The submission period will end July 31, and then voting will take place throughout the month of August.

And wow, are there a lot of submissions — more than 100 pages, with 20 submissions per page. I of course would encourage you first to find one you like to support, as these things should be, but I couldn’t help but note that one of my favorite webcomics cartoonists has entered the fray.

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Three Count | Keith Knight, TCAF panels, Joe Latham

Here are three things in comics to to buy, to listen to and to support today.

1. To Buy: Good On Both Sides by Keith Knight

Gentleman Cartoonist Keith Knight, creator of The K Chronicles and the inspiration for the Hulu series Woke, has a new collection of his (th)ink comic strip available through his Big Cartel shop. He’s offering both a standard edition and an artist’s edition (which is signed, numbered and includes a doodle) of Good on Both Sides. Both have fairly limited print runs, so buy early and often.

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Three Count | Faith Erin Hicks, Dark Side of Purity, Erica Henderson

Here are three things to read, to support and to buy today.

1. To Read: Faith Erin Hicks’ comic on, well, everything

Faith Erin Hicks is the creator of the upcoming graphic novel Ride On, as well as One Year at Ellsmere, The Nameless City trilogy, Friends with Boys and many more. In between her graphic novel work she created a short comic to express her frustrations with everything going on in the world right now and the feelings of powerlessness it brings:

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Three Count | Black Phoenix, Backstory, System Error

Check out three crowdfunding campaigns on the newly launched Crowdfundr platform.

To Support: A bunch of stuff on the new crowdfunding site Crowdfundr

Crowdfundr is a brand-new crowdfunding site that just launched recently and is already hosting several comics and comics-related crowdfunding campaigns. It can be used for other things, of course, like music and film, but who cares about that stuff — there’s comics to be had! Comics!

“Our goal is for Crowdfundr to be the most creator-friendly crowdfunding platform,” said ConnectionPoint President David Barach. “That’s why we offer it for free and include other creator friendly features like being able to roll a campaign over into a store and include more reward choices for supporters. We also have special features for indie publishers and studios to collaborate with their creators and run concurrent campaigns. I think creators are going to be pleasantly surprised at the ways we support them, now and with future enhancements, toward sustainable and continuous crowdfunding for their work.”

I thought I’d dedicate this edition of Three Things to highlighting some of the cool stuff that’s up on the new site now:

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Three Count | Jack Teagle, Kaiju Sunset, Omnis Temporalis

Here are three things to buy, to support and to hear in comics today.

1. To Buy: 100% Unofficial Simpsons Comix

“Illustrator and painter Jack Teagle works from an old shipping container he converted into a studio on his parent’s farm in Southwest England.” That’s the opening to a great interview with Teagle that appeared on Threadless.com (yes, the T-shirt website) that I first saw on LinkedIn, of all places, the other day. Threadless and LinkedIn! What is even happening here?

Anyway, in that interview Teagle talks about a fun side project he and several other artist friends had a few years back, the Simpsons Drawing Club, where they would draw zany pictures and comics featuring Simpsons characters. They stopped posting art to their Tumblr in 2020, but Teagle has collected some of his comics from the project into a 52-page collection titled 100% Unofficial Simpsons Comix.

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Three Count | Roachmill, George Pratt, Kevin Conroy

Here are three things in comics to support, to see and to watch today.

1. To support: Roachmill returns from It’s Alive!

The 1980s saw a huge explosion in the number of comics coming from independent comics publishers. It was mainly driven by a couple of factors, one being the creation and growth of the direct market, and also by what’s known as the black-and-white comics boom (and subsequent bust) that was sparked by the creation of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and fueled by a speculator’s market of low print run, and often low quality, B&W comics. But there were certainly some gems amongst the garbage.

One of the companies in the mix back then was Blackthorne Publishing, a company born when Pacific Comics closed down, who would go on to be quite successful for a number of years publishing 3-D comics, comic strip reprints, licensed comics and original stuff. One of those originals was Roachmill, by Rich Hedden and Tom McWeeney, which was definitely a gem.

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Three Count | UNBANNED, Humble Bundle, DC Pride

Here are three things to read, to support and to watch today. Happy Pride Month!

[Image above: Heathen cover by Natasha Alterici]

1. To read: Vault announces “UNBANNED” initiative for Pride Month

June is Pride Month, as you’ve probably noticed if you’ve visited any corporation’s website or social media account this week to see that they’ve updated their logo with a rainbow flag. Some companies are doing more than that, though, including three comics-related ones that I wanted to draw attention to today.

First is Vault Comics, who today announced UNBANNED — “a Pride month initiative to give away free queer books to everyone, everywhere.” If you’ve followed the news over the last few months, you know that there’s a very orchestrated campaign going on right now against books with LGBTQ+ themes (among others) as politicians attempt to win points with constituents. Vault is not only making some of their titles by LGBTQ+ creators available for free on their web store all month, but also shared a very heartfelt message with LGBTQ+ readers in doing so. I try to keep these Three Things posts “press release free” and just share things I’ve discovered organically, but hey, what are rules made for if not to be broken? Here’s the press email they sent out today in full:

Banning books is nothing new to the world of comics and literature, but in recent months we’ve seen an unprecedented uptick in new bans across the country. These bans have targeted many queer books and creators. And while politicians and extremist groups may be working hard to erase LGBTQIA+ voices, we at Vault Comics continue to maintain that this space, our space, has always and will always be safe — but more than safe, it will be loud, proud, and unapologetic.

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